Women over 30 gained the vote in 1918 mainly because of women's contribution on the war effort. Do you agree with this view? Explain your answer.

Women over 30 gained the vote in 1918 mainly because of women’s contribution on the war effort. Do you agree with this view? Explain your answer

Women over 30 gained the vote in 1918. There were a number of reasons for this but mainly because of women’s contribution to the war effort. I will be looking at these different reasons and writing about how everything came together for the vote for women. I will start by looking at what the women did in the war.

Women were pleased by the outbreak of the war because this meant they could prove themselves and even get suffrage at the end of it all. Women thought this was a patriotic duty and wanted to prove they were indispensable. So many men had been called away to fight that women were needed to do their jobs. As a result, the number of women working in industry increased enormously. The war made it acceptable for women to work in shipyards, collieries and brickyards, as they had done a century or more earlier. Some of them took on highly-skilled work as engineers, lathe-operators and carpenters. Later in the war, women made up most of the workforce in government munitions factories. In some of these jobs women were welcomed. In others they were resented because, with little or on training, they did jobs which had previously been seen as being skilled. Thanks to this there were major effects on the way men thought about women.

There were many effects that were caused by the war. Politicians like Asquith and Lloyd-George changed their mind about women because of the way women handled affairs while men were giving women the vote in 1918. Old arguments about women being weak had been disproved by women during the war. Parliament had to change the voting system so that all soldiers could vote. In 1913 nearly half of all men still could not vote. There were other factors of why women over 30 gained the vote in 1918.

Women over 30 gained the vote ...

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Women over 30 gained the vote in 1918 not only because of women’s contribution to the war; there were a few other reasons for women over 30 gaining the vote in 1918. After the war all men were getting the vote so it was more difficult to ignore the women. The government thought that the women’s suffrage organisation would cease this opportunity to cause a revolution and unsettle Britain, but this wasn’t the case and it impressed the government at how co-operative women were being. In 1915 the government realised it had a problem. The old voting system demanded that voters live on the same place for the twelve months before an election. So if there were to be an election during the war, most soldiers would not be able to vote. The government decided to change the law and make sure the ‘war heroes’ got their vote. Women’s groups saw their opportunity and began to put pressure on the government it include votes for women in the change law. There were no demonstrations, but there were many meetings between women’s leaders and politicians, and a flood of telegrams and letters were sent to MPs. These were most of the different factors, form which led to women over 30 gaining the vote in 1918.

All of the factors played an important part in getting the vote for women over 30, but the most important factor in my opinion was the women’s contribution to the war effort. The war set the ball rolling it created many more jobs for women, and with most men away at the war, the women were the people who got the main money in the household now. Women were doing such a good job they became indispensable to the war effort. In 1918 parliament finally passed a new law which gave all women over 30 the right to vote. After all the frustrations and turmoil of the pre-war campaigns and after years of hard work, demonstrations and petition women finally got the vote.

647 Words

Jayesh Patel 10X